One thing that’s impressive about Taylor Swift is how she always seems to find new ways to express the unbearable pain of heartbreak. “Say Don’t Go” is about a relationship that begins with one party fearing that it’s inevitable. “I’ve known it from the very start / We’re a shot in the darkest dark,” Swift sings. Darkness is a recurring theme; Swift explores how the night can go from being a magical time where lovers whisper sweet nothings in each other’s ears to a representation of the emptiness of a lost love. And with just a few words, she takes us from being wooed to being abandoned and ghosted: “Why’d you whisper in the dark / Just to leave me in the night? / Now your silence has me screamin’, screamin’.”
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There are red flags that this relationship is doomed, but the scorned party ignores a big one — her lover not feeling as strongly for her as she does for them — because she’s too in love. “Oh no, oh no, it’s not fair / ‘Cause you kiss mе and it stops time / And I’m yours, but you’re not mine,” Swift sings. She describes her pain using the visceral imagery of blood and a knife being twisted but would still take the one who caused her so much anguish back in an instant. We learn this from the chorus: “I would stay forever if you (Say) say, “(Don’t) don’t (Go) go.”
